David E. Kelley Talks His New Amazon Legal Drama ‘Goliath’ – And Throws One Network Under The Bus

Goliath creator David E. Kelley is a television legend. The lawyer-turned-showrunner infused network courtroom drama with a heaping dose of realism. He’s the guy responsible for Harry’s Law, Boston Legal, The Practice, and Ally McBeal. Now he and his long-term writing and producing partner Jonathan Shapiro are making the move to streaming. Their brand new crime thriller, Goliath, looks at the drama of one high-stakes case from every possible angle.

Decider got a chance to sit down with Kelley after Amazon’s summer TCA panel and he explained the motivation for coming to streaming and called ABC out for leaving his iconic dramas out to dry.

DECIDER: Right now I’ve noticed a big trend and a lot of the crime dramas seem to be doing the same thing, whether it’s Making a Murderer, The Night Of, Broadchurch, they’re all focusing on one big crime over a whole season; did you see that happening in the zeitgeist and decide it was time?

DAVID E. KELLEY: No, some of those came before us so I didn’t say that we were blazing the trail on that at all. It’s just something that I’d always wanted to do: to pick apart pieces of the trial and not just look at it through the prism of your protagonist but see it through the eyes of the expert witness or the antagonist characters, the siblings, or spouses, or significant others of your litigates — a lot of different prisms to play it through. There’s two things going on in this series. It’s the case itself, and then what the case does to the people involved. And I look at the case in Goliath to explore these very, very complicated characters.

So far I’ve only seen Billy Bob’s character be the focus. How did you craft that character to be the underdog? What makes him the perfect David to take on Goliath?

He’s isolated and he’s damaged and he’s broken and he’s without resources. When we meet him, he’s pretty deep in the trough and really has nothing to offer but his wits at this point. So he is a real underdog. And, he was – I suppose part of the inspiration for that, I was a big fan of the movie The Verdict and loved that part of that movie.

And given the way the practice of law has evolved, and that law firms have become these huge behemoths, and the solo practitioner is almost an extinct species, so to take this broken-down guy and put him at odds with one of these mega-firms, just struck Jonathan and I as potential for great and rich storytelling.

I know there was a question during the panel about William Hurt’s character because he does seem – at first glance – it’s a lot to take in…he does seem like the quintessential stereotype of the big, bad evil guy. And two things interested me about what you were saying in the panel. One, that we’ll see him evolve in different ways, and then two, that he’s inspired by a real-life person. Is that true?

He is. Well, not inspired, but there’s someone who bears similarity to it. I’m not going to say names.

But that character becomes — there’s two ways you can go. You can introduce someone as a human being and then start to peel back layers and reveal their monstrous underbelly. This arc, we do a little of the other. He’s introduced as a monster and the more layers we peel back, we reveal a very, very human and fragile psyche. So it’s by design that he comes out as this kind of ghoul. But he’s a much more nuanced and complicated beast than that scary monster that we introduce.

What I noticed in the first episode was a lot of the female characters, when they are first introduced, seem to be stereotypical female characters. And then, as they interact with the world, there’s hints that they are more complex and layered and subversive than that. In particular, Nina Arianda’s character I thought was phenomenal. I kind of love that she would read Billy Bob’s character the Riot Act the same way I would have. Can you talk about creating that character and casting Nina in that role? Because it seems so fresh and different from what I’m used to seeing in these dramas.

That character is one of those lawyers that is in the Valley, in the office above the Mexican restaurant that went to night school to get her degree and those lawyers are discriminated against so often within the legal world and some of them have street smarts and they’re tough and they’re ballsy and they may not have the pedigree of other lawyers but they’re not to be taken lightly. And Nina just inhabited the Patty character so well, which just became a ton of fun. The combination with her and Billy Bob’s character, his character is rather droll and laconic, and his rhythms are slow and she just is a bull in a china shop. So it was a real fun equation to play with.

Is this a one-season thing or is it going to be an anthology series? Is it going to go further? Do you have a plan for that?

With success, it will go to a second season, so we’re hoping to.

Would it be a different case?

It would be a different case, yes.

Same characters?

Some of the same characters. Not all of them, but some of the same characters. The one conceit that will probably be the same is that it will be a case with a great wrong to be righted and it will probably possess some of the same underdog qualities that are commensurate with the title “Goliath.”

May I ask what drew you to Amazon as the home for this? Was it how it played out with the bidding or was it something particularly about Amazon and their model that drew you?

We actually just had a really good meeting. Once we had a story we wanted to tell, a show we wanted to do, the next step is now to go out and try to find a network that wants to make it with you. And our first stop, actually, was Amazon. They got very very excited, which they don’t always. Sometimes you’ll get a series ordered and the people go, “Yeah, could be. I get that,” and you don’t want them taking it for the wrong reason. You don’t want them taking it if they’re tepid because it’s tough enough to get any show to work anyway if everybody’s excited. And if one party’s not got the same fervor in the belly that we have, it makes it that much tougher. They got very frisky for it, we got seduced by their enthusiasm and off we went.

Just following up on something you said, you said that sometimes networks will greenlight a show and are kind of tepid. Is there one in particular that you’re thinking about?

Harry’s Law they threw on the air. They didn’t even promote it. They didn’t even promote it and then it became their number one show and they’re going, “Now what are we going to do?” ABC didn’t care much. If ABC ever saw an episode of Boston Legal they didn’t bring it to my attention. So I’ve been on shows that have worked but without real support from the network. And when you get that support, like Fox really championed Ally McBeal, it may not have made it without it. ABC, again, didn’t want to put The Practice on, they threw it away. The Practice survived, despite ABC’s intentions or lack of intentions, on Saturday night. It actually won an Emmy before we even got a time slot. Then they put it on and became late champions of it.

If you don’t have the support of a network, then it’s just very very difficult. And some shows will get picked up to fill up their landscape but they’re not particularly zealous about it. I’ve had shows that they’ve been real champions of and other shows where they didn’t quite get it. And CBS was very zealous about Picket Fences. We probably wouldn’t have survived if they weren’t so in love with what we were doing there. But again, Harry’s Law and Boston Legal, we survived despite the networks and other things just didn’t make it at all.